Commercial Media: Butts (on seats)

This post is based off the lectures given by Bruce Redman in JOUR1111: Introduction to Journalism and Communication at UQ.

Before I start this post, I should mention that I don’t watch commercial tv… at all. If you’ve read my media diary you should already be aware of this, but I’m sure it will come as a shock for some of my intrepid viewers. So when I talk to you about commercial media, I’m mostly going off hearsay and the invaluable information provided by Bruce Redman.

So what is commercial media? Why does it exist?

At this stage I had intended to give you a humourous definition of commercial media from Urban Dictionary, but all I got was a definition for bootylicious. Fortunately Bruce Redman saves the day again, with a handy list of dot points!

As I’ve suggested, commercial media is profit driven. It’s not government or license funded, so it survives or fails purely on its business success. Its

business is generating audiences, and it’s goal is to make profit by selling advertising to its audiences.

I know of no good reason for the existence of commercial media. I suspect it has something to do with the mansions and swimming pools and bikini babes the Fairfax family has in abundance.

And now for a word from our sponsors.
Hear anew the epic tale of love, betrayal and battle.

After that word from my sponsor, its time to discuss commercial media’s role in a democratic society.

Oh, wait, it doesn’t have one.

I may be a little bit contemptuous of commercial media.

Is my bias showing?

The media has a responsibility in a democracy, to give/present/portray, etc:

1. a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning
2. a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism
3. the projection of a representative picture of the constituent groups in society
4. the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society
5. full access to the day’s intelligence

(taken from the Hutchkins Commission)

“The first duty of the media is to shun the temptation of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” 
– C P Scott

That would be an example of all the things Fox News doesn’t do.

(Here’s where Urban Dictionary does come in handy:

Fox News: A pseudo-news channel catering to the bottom of the American right-wing extremist barrel - people who are deathly afraid of anyone and anything that's even the slightest bit different from them.

Also, Hitler is the founder of Fox News (according to Urban Dictionary’s users))

But it’s all very well and good to rattle off an idealistic list of requirements for the media to follow, but what can we do if the station or company doesn’t care? We create rules. Some of the strategies Bruce suggested by implemented includes formal state requirements, legal prescriptions, state oversight committees and government agencies, statutory legislation, and voluntary or mandatory intra-organisation policing.

Coming soon from the retellers of The Iliad, the next installment in the epic saga.

What challenges do commercial media face today?

Advertising revenue for broadcast media is down and continues to slide.

This loss of revenue means that investors (advertisers) are less likely to funnd the station, less money for quality productions and original content. This means Australian audiences get more repeats of US sitcoms and reality TV. And yes, that is a bad thing.

(Don’t even get me started on the sexism in shows like Family Guy)

But, I hear you say, with these challenges, problems that we see affecting commercial TV already, what sort of future does commercial media have? Does it even have a future?
Unfortunately, the answer is yes, dear reader.

But it still faces many challenges, and many questions have not yet been answered, such as:

-       How will it continue to make profits if advertising revenue is declining?

-       How does it continue to serve the advertisers, audience and the public good?

-       What kind of audience can it expect to get?

-       What cumulative effect does this have on the practice of journalism and public communication?

And that is where I shall finish today my friends. I hope I see you all in the lecture this afternoon!

Spin Tactics in Australian Politics

 This work is based off the lectures and questions given by Dr Ian Ward in POLS2111: Politics and the Media, UQ.

  

 

Politics has been described as an “ongoing strategic contest to define (or frame) policy problems deserving of attention”. This contest doesn’t just take place in parliament or within the inner sanctums of party rooms, it is a contest that happens daily, in the news papers and in the homes of the voting populace.

To reach this voting constituency, politicians rely on a variety of mediums, chief of which is the media.  However politicians want their message to be broadcast in a certain way – the way most beneficial to them – that may not be how the media is planning to release a story. To combat this, politicians utilise a variety of public relations strategies, or ‘spin’, to maximise favourable news coverage. The concept of ‘spin’ has evolved dramatically with the internet revolution. Spin encompasses not just the delivery of a message or press release, but the ways in which parties and politicians present their message to the media and the consuming populace. Gaber identifies many of these strategies, from the ‘respectable’ or above board strategies, to those considered ‘below the line’. While spinning will not be discussed explicitly, all the strategies utilised and explained below should be considered part of the process of creating and maintaining ‘spin’.

Staying on message

For a politician to stay on message, requires them simply to not stray from the party line, or deviate from pre-written responses. This is crucial for politicians to remember if they are to present a united front – if everyone has the same line scripted they can’t commit to something the party doesn’t want, a costly gaffe not just in terms of media relations, but inter-party politics. This strategy was utilised by Julia Gillard after her recent trip to North Korea; when taking questions from an audience, all her responses related to her trip to North Korea, or the party policy on dealing with North Korea.

Re- and prebuttals

While the definition of a rebuttal is common knowledge, the ‘prebuttal’ is less well known. Rebuttals in politics are responses or party statements to an opposition’s or media story. If a party gets lucky, information on a story or conference will be leaked and they can supply a response to the media before the opposition has even released their story, this is a prebuttal.

Setting the news agenda

Parties see the setting of the news agenda as a crucial element of spin, and rightly so. In framing and timing the release of their stories in a certain way, they can effectively manage the media to present the stories they wish, thus setting the media agenda. However, the timing needs to be right when leaking a story to the media: too much notice on a story gives the media time to seek out differing opinions, rebuttals, which will not be conducive to the original party’s plans.

Fire breaking

Fire breaking occurs when a story is deliberately released as a diversion for another story, for example, to keep journalists from following up a potentially harmful story by suddenly expressing horror at the cut of Julia Gillard’s jackets. The flip side of this strategy is ‘stoking the fire’ – finding material to keep an awkward or potentially damaging story about your opponent running.

Pre-empting, laundering and kite flying

Another tactic Australian politicians employ when attempting to manage the media is that of ‘pre-empting’ or laundering: releasing a bad story in the middle of several positive stories, in the hope it will get relegated to the back pages of the paper or the last minutes of the news. Of course, even better for the party would be if the negative release was simply forgotten. Similar to this tactic is ‘kite flying’, when the government ‘floats’ new proposals in the media to test the public reaction. If the reaction is unfavourable they can quickly pull the story by inserting something more interesting. Pre-empting, laundering and kite flying are most commonly seen around the time the budget is released.

Intimidation, bullying

The brute-force approach employed by some parties and spokespersons can also be quite effective. If a journalist won’t co-operate with a party they can be taken out of the loop. Journalists out of the loop can find themselves not just excluded from sources of information but also openly bullied. When faced with this sort of reception, the dilemma for journalists becomes this: “accept the line, the spokesperson, the story and all would be well, but there would be no investigate or impartiality in the story”. But if they decide to follow up compromising stories, “the result can be interview bids turned down, access to breaking stories denied and no flow of exclusives”.

Today, the word ‘spin’ refers to the process of media communication and manipulation employed by politicians to influence the media and the people. It encompasses a range of techniques both ethical and not quite so decent. These techniques had slowly developed over time, from an often laughed at tactic to the most commonly employed strategy, made possible due to the innovations in technology and online journalism. However, it is only in recent years that the need for ‘spin’ and ‘spin doctors’ has increased, due to the explosion in online journalism and the 24-hour news cycle. Oscar Wilde once said ‘the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy’. Today, perhaps a more accurate saying would be public relations methods are necessary to manipulate the media because the media expects politicians to utilise public relations methods.

A Short History of Agenda Setting In the Media

 This work is based off the lectures and questions given by Dr Ian Ward in POLS2111: Politics and the Media, UQ.

The concept of ‘agenda setting’ was first established in the early 20^th Century, by Walter Lippmann. In his book, Lippmann argued that “mass media are the principal connection between events in the world and the images of these events in the citizens' minds”. Basically, the media sets the public agenda – what it displays as important, the public comes to think of as important.

From this early beginning, the concept of agenda setting – through the media, for the public - grew, until the 70’s, where it was ‘properly’ formalised in papers published by McCombs and Shaw. McCombs himself was not only influenced by Lippmann, but also by Bernard Cohen, who in the 60’s stated that “the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about”. This encouraged McCombs to collaborate with Shaw in writing The Emergence of American Political Issues: The Agenda-setting Function of the Press. This work achieved much acclaim and helped spark an interest in the agenda setting abilities of the media amongst their peers.

Nearly ten years later, in 1988, Rogers and Dearing theorised that agenda setting is a process with three elements. “News media identify and give prominence to important issues, constructing a 'media agenda'.   News coverage and priorities influence the way the public thinks. In turn the ''public agenda' influences the priorities and thinking of policymakers or the 'policy agenda'”.

This idea, while not very different from the ideas postulated by McCombs and Shaw, and even by Cohen, helped fill in details on a political and public institution that has for too long been assumed unimportant to the running of society – the media.